~ Heading back to Callie

Monthly Archives: November 2011

Time is speeding by. With daylight savings time ending on November 6, 2011 the rhythm of life began moving quickly by with the events of the 400th Anniversary and Celebration of the King James. Taking a quick breath after their culmination (on Nov 21st) it was suddenly Thanksgiving and time to gather recipes and think about a meal for 4.5 family members despite the 75 degree days.

Winter is only now beckoning with the gray overcast skies, the barometric weather changes taunting rain and the howling Santa Ana winds. Joan Didion’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook,” (from her book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem) describes how unsteady and close to the edge we are, living in a pocket of wind roaring over the Santa Ana (or Santana) River creating gusts that howl into the psyche of we Angelenos without the steadiness of ice to grip.

Suzuki on the 500m during the speed skating world championships in Oslo by Nationaal Archief

Thanksgiving greets us with the backdrop of feral chickens and the falling of brown leaves that never first faded from a golden hue. The winter rains have finally begun after long days of forecasting their arrival while many who suffer from barometric pressure changes wait with stories of dismay. Nothing seems to move with the kind of order that small town living does. The red tape quagmire of city living joins the drama of the evening news while sensitive souls who live here find other ways of navigating their way to turkey day.

Mary Rocap and Megan Whitted (click then scroll down) started a women’s singing circle at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church (in Hillsborough, NC) several years ago for women who love to sing. We gathered around the compline hour and prayed with the lighting of a candle and then broke into song. This was our gathering, our home with other women whose voices and life stories inspired the creative in us.

After many months here in Callie this North Carolina life is fading away and the women I sang with are taking the songs we prayed with to new places. Mary Rocap’s new CD, “Deep December Dreams,” along with featuring Mary’s stellar songwriting and vocals, has a few tracks that include the Women’s Singing Circle as back up.

So here’s to the women at St. Matt’s and the artistic and literary town of Hillsborough, North Carolina.

In celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible, Makoto Fujimura was commissioned to illumine the four holy gospels in a Crossway project that has become both a book and an art exhibit. If you are in southern California, you can see it at APU in the Duke Art Gallery until November 21st. I have been honored to participate in the events surrounding this astonishing body of work.

Last week Mama and I took our afternoon Sunday drive to uptown Whittier to see the changing autumn leaves off of Painter Avenue. Unimpressed with the staid oak greenery, Mama said we should visit Penn Park someday, so I made the next right to head in the direction of my girlhood park.

The trees surrounding this circlular park made it forest-like and hilly. There was something severe about the shadows these trees cast making Penn a brooding park — not light and airy like Legg Lake off of Rosemead Blvd. This serious, brooding park met us with just as much concern as I'd remembered because of the care of its trimmed hedges in this finely polished neighborhood — no wild, flat grass to run through with new photographers taking formal portraits in the dark wooded green.

On the way home we saw the beginning of a rainbow that split in two — or was it a double rainbow? I hadn't seen one of these in ages and Mama suggested we pull over to see it. After the traffic thinned, we pulled over watching the sky with awe and then pulled out to take a different route back, watching the rainbow as we drove, giddy adults ensconced in the magic of memory and the wonder of colored light beginning to fade.

Did I mention that the persimmon trees next door have branches that lean to our side of the yard? Because the tree is so rich with fruit, the neighbors share with us the fruit that falls on our side of the brick wall, rounding out our selection of not yet ripe oranges and lemons.

Kookaburras are native to Australia and New Guinea. They are known for their loud and uncanny bird call mimicking a hysterical human laugh. They are jovial, eat raw meat, and sing with their peers in an open chorus, their language a memory of echos mingled with melody.

This is what it’s like to start to think in Russian again, to speak it daily at home and to find a native speaker with whom I learn words I’d never known as a child. Speaking another language does not happen softly nor in ones own quiet room, but in a raucous chatter, tripping over pronunciations that strain to make sense in English. In all of this navigating of languages laughter is the best part of re-learning a language you’ve known since birth.

Life has been full. There are so many adjustments to make that breathing is all I can do. This, however, is good.

A dear woman, a singer that I met over a year ago died on October 16, 2011 when the lymphoma that raged inside her split into a tumor behind her lungs. It caught her off guard as she and her doctors were paying attention to the balance in her white blood count and the other numbers that accompany a recovering cancer patient. Although we had known that Diane’s time would be short, many of us didn’t hear the news until we clicked onto her Facebook page. This is my third friend whose death has been announced on this social networking tool and it is as surreal as putting on a gas defense mask. Here I am, on earth, transitioning into a new state and job gobsmacked with faces from my past and in the hurry of trying to keep ‘makin’ it’, I click on a link and Diane is gone.

So I wrench my sadness and try to find the kind of voice that will honor my joy filled friend – a woman who lived her last days as she lived her first, placing her courage in the public eye and writing about it and about the death her love would not succumb to. She gave it her all and the torrent of people whose lives she touched continue to write and post their memories all the while laying her to rest in the gentle green earth. This one’s for you Diane, breathing on your own now, no more masks or chemo as you sing to us from that holy city.

Gas Defence (typo not mine), ca. 1916 by the National Archives, London